Roads and Tokens
by Intaglionyx
Summary: "The roads men walk in their grief are more often than not long and winding ones—almost as long and winding as this letter will no doubt prove to be, by the time the sun has set and my candles have run short." Eliwood writes a letter to Lilina.


**Roads and Tokens**

* * *

Marquess Ostia,

It was good to receive your last letter, Lilina. I am glad to hear that Roy has recovered, even if not yet fully; I am more than familiar with the frustration that comes with being bedridden. When he arrives in Ostia, your charming courier will bear a second letter addressed to my son, which I hope will lift his spirits even further.

As always, Pherae is handling itself quite well. My steward had a minor fit when Marcus pointed out a gray hair in his mustache, but otherwise, things have been quite peaceful. On the topic of Merlinus, he and Marcus will arrive in a week's time with another shipment of preserves, dried meats, and other goods to be incorporated in your larger convoy of aid to Bern.

In response to your other queries—have your courtiers been pressuring you to shed the black? Lilina, it is true that nearly two seasons have passed since your loss, but every man's grief runs a different course, whether short and straight or long and winding. You could wear your mourning token for a year or longer, and none with any decency would ever fault you for it. I may have removed my own token years ago, but sometimes I feel its weight again on my breast, and in my heart.

Truthfully, you remind me of your father in this, as well as of another member of your family, albeit one you never knew. The roads men walk in their grief are more often than not long and winding ones—almost as long and winding as this letter will no doubt prove to be, by the time the sun has set and my candles have run short.

When I was thirteen, I spent a summer in your castle at Ostia, in the care of your grandmother. I had known your father long before then, but never for so long at a time. We spent days and weeks and months joined at the hip, eating and training and studying together. We spent our mornings in the practice yard out behind the castle, near the knights' barracks, and our afternoons bent under the eye of your grandmother's younger brother, working at our math and history. At all hours of the day, we were within arm's reach of one another.

Your grandmother was a strong woman as well as a strong marquess, but the same illness that took Hector's father before I knew his family took her as well, in the last month of our thirteenth summer.

In retrospect, things happened quickly after that. Ostia's steward had retired shortly after I arrived for my fostering, and your grandmother had taken on his duties herself, so Uther had to take the marquess's circlet from his mother's corpse and plant it on his own head, from what your father told me afterward. Hector was so _angry_…and for half a week after that, I barely saw him, and nor did anyone else in the castle. He rose late from bed, he disappeared when it was time for lessons, and if he ate at all, it was in the kitchens at night, for we never saw him at high table.

Those were strange days. Your father's brother had never been the friendliest of men, but he became like a statue once that circlet touched his brow, for all that he had never been open of speech before. He must have spoken in his council chamber, but it was not as though some boy of thirteen years was invited to those dealings. His uncle barely left his library; when I saw him, he looked half-starved. At dinners, you barely heard a spoon or knife touching bowl or plate; everyone was too busy staring past their dishes to eat them. Barely a word was exchanged…your grandmother was well-loved, and the loss of her did something to the castle. As for me…Hector barely had a word for me, Uther wouldn't spare a word at all, and I began to wonder whether perhaps my time at Ostia was meant to end soon.

On the fourth day after his mother died, I woke up to see Hector half out of our bedroom window. I panicked, half-asleep as I was, but he silenced me with a look as black as any I had ever seen from him, or would see since. 'Come with me if you like, Eliwood,' he said disgustedly, 'just stop shouting, damn you.'

So I dressed myself hurriedly and followed him out the window. He had torn his sheets and turned them into this absurd, ragged rope, like out of a story. I was half afraid that the thing would give out under my weight, and I didn't dare touch it until Hector was safely to the ground. His window faced out on the courtyard, and the sun was barely up when your father bribed the castle guard with much of his monthly stipend of coin and reassured them with promises that he wouldn't leave the town.

We circled around to the east wall—no, the west, the side closest to the knights' barracks. He pulled a plain steel axe out from behind some dense bit of scrub that clung to the castle walls, and then he was off again, headed back to the town. It was all I could do to follow him, half out of curiosity, and half to make sure he wasn't planning anything _too _foolish, for it was obvious that something decidedly foolish was afoot.

He wouldn't answer my questions, but soon enough even I could guess where we were headed. The arena in the center of the city loomed larger and larger as we walked. I placed a hand on his arm and tried to turn him around, but he just shrugged me off and kept walking, faster than before. He seemed so _stiff_; he looked nothing like the boy I had spent my summer with. In his posture, he almost reminded me of his brother, for all that the two were like oil and water otherwise.

When we reached the arena, Hector made his way to the contenders' bench and sat. In the morning sunlight, with my eyes cleared of their waking bleariness, it was plain to see the changes that those four days had wrought in him. Before those days, your father was a man prone to smiling and laughter, but his mouth was a hard, thin line, and there was a tightness to his eyes that worried me. I sat on the opposite bench and watched him as he pulled a long spool of black ribbon from the pack he wore at his side. As more began to filter into the arena's courtyard—mostly men, with a few older boys and a handful of women—your father began to wrap the half of his axe in the dark fabric. He tied it off in a bow—short and basic—and then slipped the spool back into his pack.

It was clear to me then that the weapon was meant to be his mourning token, and that he meant to display it before as many men as possible. I wanted to say something. I _had _to say something; Hector was my friend, and truth be told, for all that we were evenly matched in the years that followed, in those early days, I could best him in the practice field more often than not. He did not even _like_ battle; mastery of some form of blade was expected of the sons of every noble house, just as they were obligated to learn their letters and the histories of their realms. Our tussles on the practice field were just one more lesson that he complained at in our free time, and I could not see why he was throwing himself to the dogs of the arena—for dogs they were, pocked and scarred from years of fighting for their meals and their coin.

I had to say something, but even as I worked at trying to phrase my appeal, a reedy man tapped your father on the shoulder. He was, I would later come to understand, the man who arranged the bouts. He also tapped a man seated close to my right; he wasn't much taller than Hector, but he looked to be at least half again his age, from his face and frame. Before I could get a closer look at him, the arena master led them both by the shoulder toward the open gateway that led to the arena proper.

While the stone benches that circled the arena itself were sparsely filled, the place was so massive that there were still at least a hundred townsfolk and tourists eying Hector and the other man as they walked to the center of the lawn. Cheers, cries and catcalls filled the air. I was terrified, as much of the risk to Hector as I was of the inevitable words that would be leveled at me for not stopping things before they had come this far. I moved as close as I could to the action, stopping only at the arched gateway. The master eyed me from his own place at the edge of the lawn, but I did not bear a weapon, so he probably guessed that I was a friend or acquaintance of one of the two competitors.

With the master's whistle as a signal, the fight started. At once, your father ran toward the other man, who raised his own blade—a short thing, perhaps two feet in length—in anticipation of the blow. Your father didn't even raise his axe to swing, however, but simply rushed the man with his weapon held before him. The two met, and for a few moments they grappled with arms and blades and hands, but then Hector did something clever with his feet, and suddenly his opponent was on his back, with Hector's knee planted between his ribs and the axe's blade leveled just below his chin. In a voice that cracked, your father shouted for the other man to yield.

The other man must have nodded—I heard nothing, despite the momentary silence that had taken the stadium—for Hector stood at once, staggering backwards as he let the other man take breath once again. The arena erupted with noise as your father lifted his axe above his head in both hands. The black ribbon almost seemed to suck in the rays from the sun that had risen over the eastern edge of the arena's circular wall. As he turned to face my side of the arena, I was expecting a broad grin, or even a mere smile, and so the frown that faced me was almost like a physical blow.

When the noise had finally subsided, and your father and his opponent had come back to the sunlit lobby of the stadium, I moved to Hector's side. My intended congratulations all stuck in my throat as he turned to look at me. As the other man walked past us, muttering under his breath, your father faced me with a darkness in his eyes. I closed my mouth; there was a tightness, a sort of quirk or grimace to Hector's lips that suggested he had something to say, but the silence stretched between us.

His reticence lasted until the master of the arena had led the next two contenders out to the waiting crowd. "I wasn't really expecting to—" He shut his mouth. "Well, that went better than I expected."

I did not know what to say to that. I shifted my balance from one foot to another. "Why are we here, Hector?" I asked after a few moments' silence.

His answering look told me nothing, save perhaps that he had expected me to know. Truthfully, at the time I did not and could not understand what had driven him to sneak out of his own castle with a weapon wreathed in dark ribbons. They were still there, tied tight around the haft of his axe, though their black sheen was marred somewhat by the dust and dirt from the struggle on the ground at the end of the bout. Following my gaze, your father brushed at the cloth with a gloved hand that was itself coated in grime. He left it alone after a few moments, realizing that he was only making it worse. He grimaced, then looked at me once again. "Do you think me a fool?" he finally asked.

Much as he had expected to lose his bout, I could tell that he expected me to say _yes_. I shook my head. "No, but I don't understand, either."

The guards looked apprehensive when we reached the main gate of the castle, and one held out an open palm as we attempted to pass. "My lord Hector, the Marquess wishes to speak with you in the council chamber," he said, a lopsided smile taking hold of part of his face. "Er…one of our own was in the stands, my lord. He ran straight here as soon as your match was over."

Your father frowned. To his credit, there was not a hint of worry on his face that I could see. "Was my coin not enough to keep you silent?" he asked.

"Well…Podrek received no coin, my lord, as he was at the arena." The grizzled man scratched at the joining of his neck and jaw. "In fact, I recall him mentioning that he lost most of _his_ coin betting against you. My lord."

That provoked the closest thing to a smile that I had seen on your father's face since your grandmother's death. "Well, at least there's some justice in that." He looked to me, and I was glad to see a bit of his normal self pressing against the mask of pale skin and tightened muscle that had been his face of late. "We'd best not keep my brother waiting. Come on, Eliwood."

My gladness at Hector's newfound cheer was tempered by the knowledge that we were going to meet his brother—and in the council chamber, the one place your father had not shown me that summer. Hector walked with his head held straight, however, and I swallowed my fear and followed him.

I had not understood Hector's reasons for sneaking to the arena, and it was plain to see that Uther did not understand, either. He stood at the far end of the darkened room facing a broad window that looked out onto the castle's courtyard. It occurred to me that if he had been standing there that morning, he might have seen Hector and I climbing down from his bedroom window. For all my curiosity about the room itself, it was little more than four walls and a great oval table of polished oak with a dozen chairs set around it.

He turned to face us as soon as Hector closed the door. The lines of his jaw and chin were striking to the eye; he had aged fast in the days since his mother's death, and the effect was heightened by the angry cast to his jaw. "It's good to see you well, brother." His voice was neutral. "I was told of your exploits of this morning, Hector."

"Just say what you want to say." I rarely saw your father and uncle speak, and as always it was strange to hear and see such uncharacteristic tension in Hector's voice and stance. "I take it you don't approve."

Uther frowned. "No, I don't. I shouldn't even have to tell you why," he said, and it was plain from the tone of his voice that he planned to do so despite that. "You are still a boy, Hector, not a man, and even if you _were_ full grown, it would still be unwise in the extreme for you to risk yourself in such a manner, and for so foolish a reason." His eyes went to Hector's axe, and to the ribbon tied around it, which looked far less striking in the dark.

Hector's hands clenched into fists, but I did not move to restrain him. Truth be told, I felt as though I should not have been there, and indeed, they spoke as though I was not present. His voice sounded strange as he spoke; it had the same restrained quality of anger as his brother's. "It was foolish of me to go, I'll admit, but don't—don't dismiss my reasons."

"And why not? Our mother is dead, and with her death, the mantle of marquess has passed down to me." And a heavy mantle it was, I could see, of rich fabric in a purple so dark that it seemed almost wet around his shoulders. "You are my heir, Hector. And yet you went running to that damned kennel to fight with the dogs. Are you truly so selfish? _Our_ mother died, I hope you remember, not _yours. _If I can grieve while holding this place together, then you can restrain yourself." For the first time, I noticed the black pin that held one side of his mantle in place. Hector, then, had not been the only one to take up a mourning token. Uther relaxed visibly, his jaw shifting beneath his skin. "Please leave. And reassure that guardsman who carried the news of your…victory. He seems to think you'll lop his head off for his trouble."

I watched your father force himself to relax, loosening his fists. "Fine." He turned to leave.

"Eliwood, stay a moment." Uther's voice caught me by surprise, for all that I had worried over exactly this scenario while fretting over Hector's bout at the arena. Pinned with dread, I looked back, but Hector was already closing the door behind him. As it shut with a click, I turned again to look at your uncle. With his brother gone, he seemed almost a different man; his exhaustion and exasperation were plain on his face. He cleared his throat. "Given the circumstances…and, well, you were meant to leave at the end of summer in any case—Eliwood, I will write a letter to your father after I have attended to some other business. It would probably be best if you returned to Pherae within the next week."

In truth, the original terms of my season's fostering had slipped my mind, but your uncle spoke truly; it was to have been for a summer, and with all that had happened, it made sense for me to leave. I knew it would feel bitter, leaving Hector in such a state, but I nodded.

"Good. You may leave. See if you can reason with my brother, will you?" He turned away to face the window once more. It was barely past noon.

Your father was waiting outside, leaning against a wall. We started walking, although I didn't know where exactly our destination was. As we traversed the hallway, Hector said, "So, you're leaving."

"Yes." In truth, I could not tell if either of us was truly saddened by it; I would miss Ostia's halls, but I already missed those of my own home. We walked in silence for several moments, but eventually I spoke. "Hector…why _did_ you go to the arena? I admit I've never…lost anyone, but…I just…" I trailed off, not knowing how best to phrase my question.

With a grunt of effort, Hector heaved his axe over his shoulder and held it level with his head. Even covered in dirt, dust and grime, the black ribbon Hector had tied around it was striking. He let his arm drop to his side, holding the axe by the area of its haft just below where he had affixed the ribbon. "Eliwood…my brother and I are…different. I'm sure you've noticed." He did not wait for my assent, but continued, "He mourns in his way. He's being a marquess. He's doing what she would have wanted. And that's…that's easy, you know? It's already laid out for him."

He stopped walking, then, and looked at me. Your father looked tired, then; he had woken before dawn, and had fought a bout as physically draining as any duel he had been faced with during our later travels. His eyes were red, and the sweat of his exertion clung to his skin and his mussed hair. I could smell it on him, even from a few feet away. There was nothing I could say, so I listened; sometimes, that's all one can do.

"My—_our_ mother wanted him to do his duty. He was our parents' heir. But I…there's no one place for me, really. Ostia is my home, but I'm not meant to rule it. So what do I do? How do I keep going? What do _I_ do?" he repeated. He raised his axe again, and there was that darkness in his eyes again, warm and strange. "My mother is dead, and I…I was too angry to mourn? Or perhaps I just had to mourn her death differently. My brother mourns with a pin and his duty, and my uncle mourns by shutting himself away from food and light. I…well, I suppose I just really needed to hit something." He closed his mouth and let his axe hang to his side once again.

I swallowed before venturing a smile, if not an entirely genuine one. "So I can leave you behind without worrying, then? You won't fall to pieces without me?"

Hector snorted, then, and the familiar mix of grin and false scowl that followed was as familiar as it was reassuring.

In truth, Lilina, you remind me as much of your uncle as you do of your father. They were both strong men and they both mourned more than once in their lives. In the war, it was both appropriate and necessary that you channel your grief and—though I may be making too great an assumption here—your anger into your efforts against Bern. In this time of peace that has followed, however, your uncle's ways are probably best. You have put forth a great effort in healing Ostia and the greater Lycian whole of the wounds both took in the war, and you are doing an admirable job of it thus far.

As I predicted, the candles have run short indeed, and I fear I may cover my writing desk in wax if I ramble on any further. Give Roy his father's regards, for all that he has a letter just as long and rambling as this one in store for him. Be well, both of you.

As always, I am your loyal friend,

Eliwood

Marquess Pherae


End file.
